Extracted Text

The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:

curred to many early visitors too. FredericLeclerc, passing through in 1838, remembered"The Principle thoroughfare, MainStreet, is as straight as an arrow, ratherlovely for the country, and goes rightdown to the stream. . . . The sidewalksare only marked out, and the finishedbuildings have considerable gaps betweenthem. ... A rather charming confusionreigns, a chaos for which there is no parallelin Europe. Thus we found the dockstill obstructed by enormous tree-trunksand stumps of great Southern pines thathad been standing in the streets; the bankleading from the river to the city is verysteep and you stumble with every step.. . .Next door to houses of a rather beautifulappearance, but which are nonethelessbuilt entirely of wood, you run intothat miserable type of house called thelog cabin in the United States." (No zoningthen either!) "All, however," as ananonymous Ohio visitor said in 1838,"was bustle and animation. Hammers andaxes were sounding in all directions; . . .I might say that here was concentrated allthe energy and enterprise of Texas. . .."The Allen brothers in their advertisementmay have said Houston was "handsomeand beautifully elevated," but we, ofcourse, know otherwise. It didn't take antebellumtravelers long, either, to learnhow slowly a tropical downpour drainsfrom a flat terrain. In May 1837 the greatnaturalist John Jacob Audubon arrived inHouston "drenched to the skin," floatingin on Buffalo Bayou at flood stage, andfound "the neighboring prairies ...partly covered in water: there was a wildand desolate look cast on the surroundingscene." Wanting to visit President SamHouston, Audubon had to wade "throughwater above [his] knees . . ." and found"the floors, benches, and tables of bothhouses of Congress . . . as well saturatedwith water as [his] clothes had been in themorning."Perhaps nothing impresses newcomersto Houston today more than our Texassizeroaches. For some reason, antebellumsojourners never mentioned roaches, perhapsbecause other pests were so muchworse. Gustav Dresel was intrigued by therats. "Thousands of these troublesomeguests made sport by night, and nothingcould be brought to safety from them. Allthe provisions soon begnawed by them,

and the best rat dog became tired of destroyingthem because their number neverdecreased. . .. Rats often dashed acrossme by the half-dozens at night. In the beginningthis proves annoying, of course;later one gets accustomed to it." Evenmore irritating to a French Catholic traveler,the Abbe Domenech, were the ants.Houston, he wrote, "is infested withMethodists and ants. These ants crawlalong the streets, and through everyroom, in endless processions; and theceiling, the walls, the floor are traversedin every direction by dark and evermovingcolumns of their battalions. Theinhabitants, with a view of removingsomething or other from their untiringsearch, place small vessels filled withwater under the bed-posts, tables, andcupboards." The very next morning thisfinicky traveler shook out his clothes and"made my escape from this ant-hill." (Henever explained how the Methodistsbothered him.)

Then, as now, Houston was a boomtown attracting all sorts of people fromthe far comers of the earth, opportunistsas well as cranks, upstanding citizens anddownright crooks. Gostav Dresel wasbemused by the pell mell nature of thepopulation. "Crimes," he wrote, "the desirefor adventure, unfortunate circumstancesof all sorts, love of freedom, andthe fair prospects of gain had formed thisquaint gathering." A description of theHouston populace, by the way, that stillrings true. Such an unstable mixture ledto prodigious drinking and shocking violence.A stunned young Irish-Anglo diplomatreported back to the British government,"The use of the bowie knife isin general practice among high and low,though I believe more at Houston thananywhere else. They are mostly worn eitherin the sleeve, or within the back partof the coat collar. As to going about unarmedeither with pistols or bowie knifeor daggar stick, it is a piece of neglect unheardof. ... I have [one of these knives]before me now . . . , on the blade ofwhich is beautifully worked the words'Arkansas Genuine tooth-pick.' Fromsuch accounts we understand why Eras